Deployment Guide

Flow Vision
● Overview of Flow Vision..................................................................................................15
● Roles and access in Flow Vision ....................................................................................16
● Flow Vision flows.............................................................................................................16
● Flow Vision licensing.......................................................................................................30
● Flow Vision configuration setup...................................................................................... 30
● System event handling....................................................................................................30
● Firmware upgrade and downgrade considerations......................................................... 31
● High Availability and Flow Vision.................................................................................... 32
● Flow Vision integration with MAPS ................................................................................ 32
Overview of Flow Vision
Flow Vision is a Fibre Channel SAN network diagnostic tool supported on all platforms supported by
Fabric OS 7.2.0 and later, that provides you with a comprehensive vision of and deep insight into fabric
traffic flows, along with the ability to non-disruptively create and capture copies of traffic flows for
analysis of traffic flows, bottlenecks, bandwidth utilization and similar fabric connectivity functionality.
Flow Vision also provides a test flow generation capability that you can use to pre-test a SAN
infrastructure for robustness. This test flow generation capability is also useful for testing the internal
connections on a switch before deploying the switch into a production environment. In addition, Flow
Vision allows you to test for fabric connectivity issues, such as slow drain, bandwidth utilization, and
similar issues.
Flow Vision features
Flow Vision has three features: Flow Monitor, Flow Generator, and Flow Mirror.
Flow Monitor
Flow Monitor provides flow monitoring and the gathering of frame statistics for fabric application flows,
including the ability to learn (discover) flows automatically that are flowing through a specified port.
Refer to Flow Monitor on page 33 for a complete description and sample use cases.
Flow Generator
Flow Generator simulates and generates test-load traffic in specific flows; this allows you to validate
hardware components, connectivity, and verify performance. Refer to Flow Generator on page 59 for
a complete description and sample use cases.
Flow Mirror
Flow Mirror provides the ability to non-disruptively create copies of application flow frames that can be
captured for deeper analysis of their contents. Refer to Flow Mirror on page 75 for a a complete
description and sample use cases.
Flow Vision Administrators Guide
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